Re: COBOL anyone?

From: Clark F. Morris, Jr. (cfmtech_at_istar.ca)
Date: 03/05/05 

Date: Sat, 05 Mar 2005 10:47:21 -0400

Tim Josling wrote:

> William M. Klein wrote:
>
>> I just HAD to ask, ...
>>
>> Given all the recent threads on this, that, and the other thing
>> (usually a word, religion, or political point of view),
>>
>> isn't ANYTHING actually related to COBOL going on with any posters to
>> this group?
>>
>
>
> I am looking for some COBOL related quotes. Anything that suggests that
> non-programmers could use and/or read COBOL programs. I think there was
> a lot of this in the early days.

After I gave up the responsibility for the payroll programs at one place
I worked, the payroll supervisor would show the newer programmers where
to make changes to the tax routines. At this site we would also bring
in people from other departments, send them to Chubb for training and
make them programmers. The Southern Railroad which was one of the
earlier members of CODASYL had the idea that clerks could write the
actual code from specifications.
>
> You see these claims all the time for new tools. Sometimes they are
> true, sometimes not - because there is more to programming than
> understanding syntax, it is a whole engineering discpline.
>
> Tim Josling
>